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Now to begin with, the unity of soul, mine and another's, is
not enough to make the two totals of soul and body identical. An
identical thing in different recipients will have different
experiences; the identity Man, in me as I move and you at rest,
moves in me and is stationary in you: there is nothing stranger,
nothing impossible, in any other form of identity between you and
me; nor would it entail the transference of my emotion to any
outside point: when in any one body a hand is in pain, the
distress is felt not in the other but in the hand as represented
in the centralizing unity.
In order that my feelings should of necessity be yours, the unity
would have to be corporeal: only if the two recipient bodies made
one, would the souls feel as one.
We must keep in mind, moreover, that many things that happen even
in one same body escape the notice of the entire being,
especially when the bulk is large: thus in huge sea-beasts, it is
said, the animal as a whole will be quite unaffected by some
membral accident too slight to traverse the organism.
Thus unity in the subject of any experience does not imply that
the resultant sensation will be necessarily felt with any force
upon the entire being and at every point of it: some transmission
of the experience may be expected, and is indeed undeniable, but
a full impression on the sense there need not be.
That one identical soul should be virtuous in me and vicious in
someone else is not strange: it is only saying that an identical
thing may be active here and inactive there.
We are not asserting the unity of soul in the sense of a complete
negation of multiplicity- only of the Supreme can that be
affirmed- we are thinking of soul as simultaneously one and many,
participant in the nature divided in body, but at the same time a
unity by virtue of belonging to that Order which suffers no
division.
In myself some experience occurring in a part of the body may
take no effect upon the entire man but anything occurring in the
higher reaches would tell upon the partial: in the same way any
influx from the All upon the individual will have manifest effect
since the points of sympathetic contact are numerous- but as to
any operation from ourselves upon the All there can be no
certainty.
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